Steam = Successful

In other Mac news, we're getting ready to add Mac numbers to our hardware survey. As longtime Steam customers are aware, our Steam Hardware Survey has become an industry benchmark for gauging what kinds of computers gamers are running around the world. We are in the process of updating this monthly report with Mac information and other new aggregate data. Here's a sneak peak at some of the preliminary findings we've gathered about Mac hardware since we launched on that platform just over a week ago:

- Roughly two thirds of all Steam Mac users are running on a laptop.
- Portal (with the same code base across platforms) is one fifth as likely to crash on a Mac than on Windows.
- And one week after launch, already more than eleven percent of all Steam purchases are for the Mac.

Eleven percent is pretty good, considering there aren't many Mac games out at the moment. Hopefully it inspires more developers to port over.

The reason is simple, macs have quite a decent part of the market and all macs have gaming potential.
The slowest graphics you get is now the 320M, which is pretty capable, while many PCs have intel graphics.

The reason is simple, macs have quite a decent part of the market and all macs have gaming potential.
The slowest graphics you get is now the 320M, which is pretty capable, while many PCs have intel graphics.

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The 320M can barely play SC2 on medium settings. For $799 you can get a Dell with a 1 GB 335M GT, better than Apple's most expensive laptop. You can't 1 GB of VRAM in ANY Mac computer, laptop or desktop.

IMO, the "gaming potential" for Macs is really weak, especially considering that games will always take a performance hit in OS X. I love Apple, but they seriously need to get their graphics together. I cringed when Steve said they chose "killer graphics over the latest processor" for the low-end MBP.

I'd be curious if downloading Portal while it's free was included in their 11% statistic. I can see it going either way from here: diminishing because all the people who just checked out Steam on launch day and downloaded Portal leave, or growing because it starts to catch on more and more. I'm hoping it will be the latter. I bet there will also be much bigger numbers for the Mac when Valve releases more of its own games.

The 320M can barely play SC2 on medium settings. For $799 you can get a Dell with a 1 GB 335M GT, better than Apple's most expensive laptop. You can't 1 GB of VRAM in ANY Mac computer, laptop or desktop.

IMO, the "gaming potential" for Macs is really weak, especially considering that games will always take a performance hit in OS X. I love Apple, but they seriously need to get their graphics together. I cringed when Steve said they chose "killer graphics over the latest processor" for the low-end MBP.

I'm really liking Steam so far. My only issue is with the trackpad scrolling speed in the UI. I've downloaded almost all my Steam games that I can (17 so far) and tested most of them, performance is brilliant. Not as good as when booted into Windows with overclock utilities running, but still a huge leap forward from a month ago.
I emailed Zenimax to ask if they could get id to bring over their library, to which they said;

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We have no announced plans for porting id/Bethesda/ZeniMax titles to Steam for Mac. If/when that changes, we'll let folks know.

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So fingers crossed they bring over the Dooms and Quakes we all love!

I don't like how you can't alt+tab (or similar) out of games though. I had to get back into Mail and Safari to fix a problem I was having with Altitude, so it was a pain having to quit the game continuously.

The GTX285 is overpriced and old. Apple really need to start including high-end graphics cards from this year, not 1-2 years ago. It's still a very capable card though.

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I never said it wasn't old. He stated that there were no 1GB cards available on any Mac, so I showed him a card that 1GB of VRAM that you can get on the Mac. The card being old/overpriced had nothing to do with it.

But I'm expecting a 5870 in the new 6 core Xeon Mac Pro's (whenever Intel decides to make their new Xeon chips widely available).

Well, hopefuly all the work in creating the ports of the games will work out financialy for the steam, and the developers. Hopefully, an 11% increase in revenue will encourage other developers to put out games for the Mac.

I know I have not purchased a game in about a year, and last week I picked up Torchlight.

The 320M can barely play SC2 on medium settings. For $799 you can get a Dell with a 1 GB 335M GT, better than Apple's most expensive laptop. You can't 1 GB of VRAM in ANY Mac computer, laptop or desktop.

IMO, the "gaming potential" for Macs is really weak, especially considering that games will always take a performance hit in OS X. I love Apple, but they seriously need to get their graphics together. I cringed when Steve said they chose "killer graphics over the latest processor" for the low-end MBP.

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so? if you bought a Mac just for gaming.. your weird.

Its about buying a Mac and ALSO being able to game on it... not that its the only reason your using it. I wouldn't use that Dell if it was given to me for free... I'd just sell it.... its useless. I'm sure it works fine for someone who just wants to game.

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